Terrible College Papers, Warclaidhm Redeemed, Justification for Grad school.

[Warriorbird]

This fellow's collected a bunch of college papers and, "commented" on them. It's enough to justify Warclaidhm's dreams of NASA, and enough to make me want to go to grad school to seperate myself from the horror of the fact that I only have my bachelor's and these people are on their way to getting them.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/projectsw3igart/

[Revalos]

My Master's Thesis was about 30 pages long. That's right, 30. With figures.

I went to the #2 ranked grad school in the USA for my discipline, University of Wisconsin - Madison. Almost every friday, the entire geography department would go to the Rathskeller, buy some beers, and show silly slideshows of their research or summer vacation or whatever to a mocking and drunk crowd. We called it Beer and Loafing.

I shit you not, the higher the respect for the grad school, the less work that is required. You ride the coattails of the prestige, you come up with a crazy theory like I did (and mine was even fun to research: correlate Mardi Gras, Las Vegas, Sept. 11th, Punk Rock, and the XFL), and it gets cited, you get praise from all over the world, and then you can go straight into the business world at a great salary regardless of the generally crappy job market.

EVERYONE MODERATELY INTELLIGENT SHOULD GO TO GRAD SCHOOL. Its like undergrad, but more fun. And, as those papers show, a BS degree is BS. I'm going to bet within the next 10 years, college degrees will be just like a GED, you'll have to get a Masters to compete.

[Bobmuhthol]

I've only read the first two and I'm already laughing my fucking ass off.

[Warriorbird]

God, Revalos. I so need to go.

[Snapp]

:lol2: I only read a few of them, but those are just hilarious. I love the smilie put at the end of the second one. Who does that?! :rofl:

[Revalos]

Warriorbird, all it takes is the GRE. My wife and I took it and both scored much much higher than we did on the SAT.

The school you went to undergrad for isn't that important. I went to the University of South Carolina for undergrad...they aren't even in the AAU for crissakes. Get good reccomendation letters (one reason I went straight from undergrad to grad), have good grades in the discipline you want to go in to (your English 101 and chemistry C's don't bother a geography department), and you've got it made.

Yeah, you might have to apply a few places, and those applications will run about $50 a pop, but not only did I get into my school, my grad school was %100 paid for by a lab teaching job they gave me when I was accepted. It even meant I didn't have to have a job outside of school. Look for the grad schools with Teaching Assistant Unions. Collective bargaining rocked my out-of-state, would have been paying $25k per year, world.

[Edited on 2-11-2005 by Revalos]

[Divinity]

I can't stop laughing... ::inhales:: :rofl:

[Keller]

Ummm, don't believe the hype?

My wife has the top financial package (read, she's fucking good at what she does) to the history graduate school at UCLA and it is not easy. She "reads" about 9-12 hours a day and is class another 4. UCLA is a top 5 modern European history grad school and the other students have about the same workload.

Perhaps the fact that Revalos did geography has something to do with his perception of grad school. Nothing against geography, but if you have a good memory and decent prior knowledge, it's not going to be that tough.

Just what I'm seeing on my end.

[Revalos]

I'm sure there are much more difficult avenues to getting a master's Keller, my wife dropped out of her History Master's because it was killing her.

But, IMHO, Geography is such a easy degree, and you can do anything with it except really intensive career paths, I'd reccomend it to anyone who wants to get a Masters but doesn't want to do it the hard way.

Is it wrong to think that? Probably...but at the same time I hate when everyone purveys grad school as this never ending torture session like I was told before I went there.

[gcstader]

<< reccomendation >>

Maybe they should have taught you how to spell at grad school.

~Greg

[Keller]

Originally posted by Revalos
I'm sure there are much more difficult avenues to getting a master's Keller, my wife dropped out of her History Master's because it was killing her.

But, IMHO, Geography is such a easy degree, and you can do anything with it except really intensive career paths, I'd reccomend it to anyone who wants to get a Masters but doesn't want to do it the hard way.

Is it wrong to think that? Probably...but at the same time I hate when everyone purveys grad school as this never ending torture session like I was told before I went there.

No doubt. I didn't mean to slight you in the least.

Do what you do man. If it works, God bless you.

Eh, it all depends. My mom holds 2 masteres from the University of Chicago and is a dissertation away from a PHD and she only pulls in slightly less than 40k a year working at the Department of economics (Her degrees are in theology).

I know people my age who make more than she does without a college degree at all

It all depends on the job, the field and what you actually want to do vs what you're willing to do. That said, I'll probably try and go to grad school assuming I can afford it

Also, this is what colleges expect out of students? WTF I Thought I was getting over on my online courses

[Edaarin]

Here's my take on it.

Large physics class, possibly foreign TA's doing a lot of the bitch work (read: grading), possibly exchange students doing the writing, or maybe the assignments were due Friday morning and the bad papers all had a rough night and did it the morning of the assignment. Lord knows I've turned in my fair share of shitty work when I half assed it.

Granted, I could probably write better papers than those whilst blind drunk, but I'm not all too surprised given that UT Austin isn't exactly a tier one university.

Furthermore, I'm not so convinced that it's a freshman physics course. If it is, UT Austin is stupid for listing it as a 300 level course.

[Warriorbird]

Yeah, seemed a bit odd.